Bigger is better right? Bigger heals means it is better— just like Gearscore, brah!!
Not necessarily.
The key with bigger heals is to be using them effectively… just because you CAN cast a GHeal that will crit for 30K doesn’t mean you should. The same goes for Flash Heal, Renew, COH, POM, Penance, etc.
Wait, what?
Overheal, at its core, isn’t going to wipe your raid, but if you aren’t overhealing it can be indicative that you are healing more effectively. Bigger isn’t always better!
Blizzard has introduced Strength of Wrynn (SoW) and Hellscream’s Warsong (HW). This mechanic is something moderately new. We haven’t seen much similar to this before: a scaling buff over time. What does this mean? Does it mean that when it gets increased that you are now 5% more awesome than you were the previous week? Maybe… but in reality, as healers, you need to figure out what this actually means for YOU.
DPS is different than healing. DPS getting a pure DPS buff from SoW and HW means they are peeling away the bosses health faster. For healing, this means your heals are hitting for more; but nothing else. SoW and HW does not increase your Haste, Crit, or Mana Regen. Do you even need these heals to be hitting for a larger amount? Ask yourself questions!
Take a look at your gems in your gear; I bet many of your are gemming for pure spellpower in your red sockets. I bet many of you are breaking socket bonuses for pure red gems. Stop. Think. Evaluate. Take a look at your logs. Do you need that extra spellpower from that Cardinal Ruby? Weigh in the 20% buff (keeping in mind its going up to 25% and then 30%). If you don’t need this added spellpower, you might have the ability to regem and increase your throughput via your other stats. Get your haste up higher! Increase your intellect if you are having mana issues! Improve stats that you think might be a little too low when under the ICC buff! (Remember Strength of Wrynn and Hellscream’s Warsong are ICC only buffs, so if your guild is running a lot of stuff outside of ICC you might be reducing your spellpower lower than you’d like).
Additionally, you might not want to wear your 4-piece T10 gear after weighing in the ICC buff. For holy, the added 10% to COH that your 4-piece provides, might be pure overheal and you can get more stats and more throughput by equipping offset items. I know I do this; I trade that 10% buff for better stats on offset gear when I am in my Holy Spec. When I play Holy I tend to run Haste heavy– I like being faster.
For Disc, this can be tricky, as your Shields are preventative… putting my “issues” with pure Bubble Spam aside… are you not proccing Rapture b/c your shields aren’t being eaten? (Remember Rapture isn’t just for you! Your other Raiders get benefit from it as well!) You could be able to increase your Haste for more Tank healing and DAs. Figure out where YOUR tipping point is- generally Disc is all about MOAR SP!!! But, with the increased buff you might have more flexibility to gear/gem. When are you giving up too much in your throughput stats for just more Spellpower? Are you going to be gaining more from more haste or are you overscaling on spellpower? A bit easier to determine if you are Holy; more difficult as Disc.
It is important to remember that shifting your focus from spellpower to throughput is up to you and is impacted greatly by your gear. If you are new to ICC and are in dungeon heroic gear and some 232 badge gear, perhaps spellpower will be the way to go for you. However, if you have the extra gems, badges, or if you are a Jewelcrafter and have extra Dragon’s Eyes laying around: I encourage you to test it out. Swap out some spellpower for more haste- kick it up a notch. See how it works for you. I know I have regemmed and have noticed an increase in my output – not from spellpower gains provided the ICC Buff, but from my thoughput gains via Haste.
